Want an easy way to keep up on the latest TUX website stories, news, and reviews? Load the RSS feed featured below into the reader of your choice, and get headlines and summaries downloaded automatically. Click here to learn more about RSS.

Comment viewing options

Try BricsCAD, They are beta testing the basic version of thier CAD programme to run in WINE. You can apply to be a tester and they will give you a serial no. The programme is easy to download and comes with its own unpackager and installer - very easy. The programme is basic, and does not have the architecturals pluggins last time I looked.

I was trying to get on with this untill i upraded my pc. to amd64 with pcie graphics and serial ata raid. I can not now run my SuSe 9.2 as it will not now get further than the kernel load, then goes blank. Back to windows im afraid. Its all very well for all these smug windows hating IT geeks slagging off people who dont know how to get this wonderfull OS working, perhaps they also know how to design and project manage a £M construction project as well as understanding how to get linux to recognize and use new hardware???? Derrrrrrr ...i dont think so. For us professionals out in the real world were PC's are merely tools used to doing real work, I regret to say that you cant do without windows.

I tried really, really hard to do my taxes under Linux this year. I'm in the USA and just installed SUSE 9 on our home computer as the primary system (Wintendo 2k is installed as a dual boot for a little longer during this transition).

I tried the online tax software at turbotax.com and taxcut.com. I tested with both IE under Crossover Office and with Firefox. turbotax.com simply wouldn't launch completely at all! Seems to me they've done some unnecessarily funky stuff wtih their web app; I simply coudn't get past login. taxcut.com did much better; I was able to complete my taxes using that system. The core functionality worked fine, but the popup helps did not work under Firefox, only under IE/cxoffice.

However, taxcut.com was going to cost me upwards of $60-70 to file (federal + state). From OfficeMax, after rebates (which were not available for the on-line product), filing cost me $25. So, I launched W2K and did my taxes there. If I'm going to spend the extra to use LInux, I'd rather that extra $25 go to an open source company, so I'll send it to my favorite project.

And, you TaxCut guys, get your marketing folks in line! The online app ought to be cheaper (or at least the same price) as the in-store application!

I am now a full time user of Linux Xandros. I do not feel like I missed any MS-Windows application, except Anti-virus, Anti-spy, Anti-hack, Anti-crack, Anti-????.......But god blessing, I don't need any of them now. I don't have to waste most of my time on this garbage in order to make the damn machine functioning.
All thanks to Linux Community and also to TUX where I learned the concepts of Linux.

I am sick of M$ (esp now with their effing authentication crap {i work at a small computer store and do wipe/reinstalls at least 3 times a week}) and am doing a full port of my home network. However I...um..backup alot of my movies (kids and all), and I use DVD Decrypter and Shrink to do most of that. Sometimes AnyDVD will take the place of Decrypter. I am looking for a program that will provide the same function as Decrypter and Shrink, and while we're at it, Alchohol. Unless WINE will give me that functionality. Anyone?

Amen to that brother. I'm your typical home user with just enough HW & SW savvy to throw together a new PC or upgrade my existing one - not w/o frequent hiccups mind you. Recently ran into a problem during an upgrade to my 3 yr old Presario that locked me out of the MoBo BIOS. Since it was a bit old anyway I ended up having to replace my MoBo so decide to also replace the CPU, video card, RAM, & PS with the main goal of retaining my original HD as is so I wouldn't lose my apps and data...

Come to find out that enough 'critical' components were changed to require WinXP activation... BUT, since I had an OEM vsn that came w/ the Compaq my changes were 'too' significant to justify it being the same system so I'd have to buy a new copy of Windows since I'm installing in on a 'new' PC...

What crap. All I want to do is get my PC back up and running w/o messing w/ or erasing my hard drive. I didn't want to put in that many new components but it's what I had to do to get back up and running.

Well, that did it for me... it's why I'm at this site now in fact. It has prompted me to do research into favorable newbie distros (only have a few days worth of Suse experience from a bit of playing around I did a couple of years ago).

Gonna put my old HD in the system AND a new one. My original to keep my home and business stuff going while I put Linux on the other and gradually ween myself off of windows completely.

If XP pulls this sh** I shudder to think of what type of wallet crushing, privacy erasing, enslavement tools Longhorn will have...

Well, as far as functionality from Alchohol...The ability to mount images, such as .iso, mdf/s, cue/bin's. Other times to make images. Such as this DVD i built with Adobe Encore. NOthing else would copy it, so i made an image with Alochol, saved to my hdd, then burned the image with alcohol to make several copies. All legimate uses, to be sure. I love the program, but am willing to make the switch if there is a viable alternative. I saw that WINE can use DVD Shrink and Decrypter. I'll try the other suggestions in the above reply also. Now also, is there an application like Encore that will build DVD's. Don't like pinnical. Possibly Premiere or Premiere elements. I like the Adobe suite because of the integration. Does Linux have an equivilant suite? Oh, yeah...Windows --- Pike off!

Linux has native support for mounting ISO images as if they were a local drive. I currently keep a copy of my Linux distro on the hard disk as an ISO permanently mounted as a virtual DVD to install new software from when needed, as well as install from the net (for new packages) directly from the distro's FTP or HTTP sites. It's really rather nice to NEVER be asked for the disk when installing new software even if it does eat up a sizable chunk of HD space. 8)

We're 95% Linux (suse) at home now. I have W2K as a dual boot for some of the kids game CDs that I simply cannot run under Wine or Crossover Office. The kids haven't forced the issue and so far, none of their games are actually installed in Windows; they've been content w/ the online games they can use.

Most online games work for them, but a few require Windows-only plugins. I'll have to get a personal of Crossover for that. (My Crossover is now under a corproate license, but it's custom, so the plugin is missing since it's not a corporate need.) To save on cost, I'll probably by a single Personal copy of Crossover and set up a single user account on the PC to install it to. The $40 license only installs once (we have 5 logins in the family), and I'm not excited about a $75 license to share a single install (5 kids, $40 is a enough). They only need cxoffice for a few things, so I think I can sell them on going to a "gaming" login for that functionality.

Still doesn't solve the game CDs, including the educational CDs that simply won't run. But I'm hoping Codeweaver's can make good on it's goal to have 95% of all windows software running properly on cxoffice by year-end. They do that, I'll find the $75.....

I'd rather support new, open source, native Linux applications, such as Lsongs, Nvu, Lphoto. Thanks Linspire for sponsoring these projects and helping ween us all away from expensive, proprietary MS software!

Me too.. but I have just gotten my soundcard working, and loaded nvidia drivers to get my resolution right in SUSE. And next I suppose I'll learn the command console and an editor and then learn to install software and then I'll be weaned from XP and just in time too.. renewal fees are due soon on my anti-virus and other support software to hold XP together ;)

I am new and just installed SuSE 9.2 which supports my hardware, but my soundcard only partially. I am using Adobe Illustrator, and Photoshop in Windows XP. I also have an entire drive dedicated to Visual Studio .NET and have just learned to write my own applications for XP windows. I would like to do the same for Linux, but I'm just starting out here. Also I am interested in 3D application software maybe blender, and multimedia in general.

I am in the process of completing my college education and have been using Xandros for about two years now. I have just upgraded to Xandros 3.0 and find it to be a leap forward from version 2.0. The college requires its students to have the ability to run many cdroms from textbooks and online sites on windows and WebCt only supports Internet Explorer.

Since Win4Lin now has a $29.95 version of its excellent software, I have installed it on top of Xandros and then installed Windows ME in Win4Lin. This combination is killer! I have the ability to work in Xandros for 90% of all I do and the other 10% is handled by ME on Win4Lin, a win win situation I guess you could say.

I recently changed my windows xp for fedora core 2. I found it really amazing, I got wine
to run my windows programs in linux and that solved 98 percent of my problems.
the only programs im not able to run are huge games made for M$ but i dont care
I'm a 15 yr old student, thats why I play video games

The only application that keeps me from recycling the windows partition is BrilliantPhoto. It lets me tag pictures with names, keywords, places, and that info is stored in the image as an IPTC tag. I looked at Mapivi, Imgseek, and a few other alpha works, but nothing would retrieve the IPTC info already in the thousands of pictures that I have. If I could only get it to run in wine (it won't)...

I just tagged some pics with BrilliantPhoto and I'm able to see the added info with Mapivi without problems.
The keywords are visible in the IPTC keywords of the pictures.
The people are in the contact IPTC tag (which is wrong IMHO), the rating is in the urgency, but they use it the wrong way: urgency 1 is the higest, not 5.
Also they store the place in the wrong tags, but anyway the information is there and visible and searchable using Mapivi.

Dotan, have you considered Win4Lin? Win4Lin has a new Home edition for $29.95 us, which will run Windows 95, 98, 98SE and ME on top of Linux. Its just like having another application open in your Linux desktop. You just click on the icon and Windows opens giving you direct access to Windows on top of Linux. If you want to know more about it, just type in Win4Lin in you browser and it will goto Win4Lin.

That doesn't sound much better than what I'm doing now- I have a KVM and switch to the windows box for picture managment. Also, I have started using Media Player 10 on the windows box, which is nice because it is a great program, and it frees up the linux box (Ferdora Core 3) a little.

But I would be willing to pay full price for BrilliantPhoto or something similar, so long as it works with the IPTC data that I already have in the photos. I moved to linux not because I am cheap (I already HAVE a windows license), but because I do not feel that Microsoft makes a quality operating system. They do make other good software (Media Player 10, Access), and nothing beats the Microsoft wireless keyboards, but I do not trust XP, IE, or Outlook.

I have been running MS Excel/Word/Access & Powerpoint on Xandros Linux for a
year now with no problems. Just stick the cd in and install. The only thing I can't
get to work is the game Civilation II, which is the only game I loved in Windows.
However Civ II and I will bet Civ III will run fine in Win4Lin. Windows ? Who needs it.

Yes, at a minimum I need to be able to run the income-tax-return preparation program that I've used for years, TaxCut, at least till a good Open Source tax program appears. Such a program seems to me unlikely since the major investment is not so much the programming as the tax and accounting expertise required.

I also use a personal-finance program, InCharge!, which now holds over 10 years' worth of my data. That's too much of a legacy for me to abandon it easily, even though I've heard good things about GnuCash.

go to www.irs.gov and you have a choice of over 10 (as I recall) options for free fed tax preparation. I've used H & R Block for several years with no probs. It's all browser based so you don't have to download or install any software. Thus it should run fine under linux.

There are several income tax programs that you can run online. Tax Act is one, TurboTax has an online version, I don't know about Tax Cut. I don't know if these programs need Internet Explorer to run, but I'd be surprised if they wouldn't run on Mozilla or FireFox.

There appears to be no decent Personal Information Manager available for Linux.
Info Select for Windows ( http://www.miclog.com/ ) is the award-winning Personal Information Manager that organizes Internet data, notes, to-do's, schedules, contacts, addresses, forms, ideas, images, and much more.
This application has for me made my life much more easily organised than would be possible otherwise. In fact, though I detest using Windoze, I am addicted to InfoSelect.
InfoSelect combines the best features of a word processor, a free-form database and a personal information manager to capture and organize many different kinds of text-based information. InfoSelect 7.0 is ideal for users who deal with lots of information. It helps to you do three things really well: grab information, organize it, and search it.
InfoSelect's simple layout invites the user to create topics and begin to compile notes. The information they contain can come in almost any digital form - documents, spreadsheets, databases, grids, forms, graphics, photos, Web pages, emails, posts from newsgroups, scanned images, calendars with alarms.
I had it working under Wine and RedHat 7.2 but subsequent changes in Wine have prevented me using it under Linux as I do not have the necessary skill to overcome the problems encountered in the installation phase under later versions of Linux.
This application is crying out for an OSS clone.

I haven't missed having to update my anti-virus program every morning 0r run my Ad Aware adbot search program. I don't miss having to give my name rank serial number and bank account every time I do something on my Fluxbox

1) Some of my class websites for my university require Internet Explorer, and there are highly important materials only accessible from these sites. I doubt they'll change anything because the campus computer labs and libraries all have Windows boxes, so any complainers will just be directed to use the labs.

2) I use Finale, the music notation software. There is nothing (not Rosegarden, not NoteEdit, nothing) that comes close for Linux. Finale and Sibelius and the other full-featured music notation software for Windows and Mac just have no credible replacements.

I'm a straight Windows user (OK, reading this forum who's going to cast the first stone!) Actually, next time I get some money it's a new hard drive and Linux since it has suddenly occured to me that most of the software I use was built for that platform(!!) - Scribus, Gimp, Inkscape, Audacity et al.

Anyhow, as a professional musician/arranger/composer I used to use Sibelius (still do if it's straightforward stuff; one tune, no polyphony etc.) Now I use Lilypond via Cygwin with the JEdit Lilytools plug-in, and the extra time used inputting the straight data for the music files pays off immensely in the quality of the output (for an orchestral score in Sibelius I would reckon 60% of my time was spent refining the output - in Lilypond, perhaps 10% - the input time is roughly comparable, perhaps 5% more in Lilypond). Of course, it's a steep learning curve; but one that has, in my experience, paid off well.

Re the discussion going on here, well, I'll have to stick with Windows for some stuff, largely just for ease of communication with others. For the rest... well, if I don't go Linux within the next six weeks I promise to use MSOutlook for six months.. and that's punishment for you!

I run GNU/Linux at work, and, thanks to Ximian Evolution's Connector for MS Exchange Server, I didn't need to touch a Windows application for about a year. Sadly, that has now changed. We have recently changed help-desk applications. The one that we used before had a Web interface that worked just fine with Mozilla and Firefox, and it was quite serviceable. The new one, called Magic, works only with MS Internet Exploder. Apparently, they make CraptiveX system calls, and their HTML source even says "we really are dependent on IE".

Thus, I now have to run Internet Exploder, with CraptiveX, JavaScript, and cookies all turned on. For this purpose, I have a Windows XP into which I log in via rdesktop.

Sadly, I've learned that CiscoWorks 2000 also works only with MS Internet Exploder. Same with one other new application that we use.

AI RoboForm was one MS-Windows utility that I used every day. And when I wrote to the developer, requesting a Debian Linux version (I use ProMepis), he replied that there's not enough of a user-market to warrant the effort (to develop a paid version). The only thing similar that I've found is FireFox's extension, AutoForm, but it hasn't been workable for me.

Hmmm.....to those who are used to the interface and feel of MS Office, OpenOffice does tend to feel like it's quite amateurish and half-baked. I felt the same way initially when I switched from Windows.

Before one goes ballistic on me let me just say I use OO extensively and am an avid GNU/Linux fan in fact, this is typed on a Mepis PC.

At least Dana was willing to try Free/Libre software and was brave enough to voice his opinion.

The fact is, MS Access is still a lot better than what is offered in the Free/Libre Software world. It fills a niche, something like between those who uses a spreadsheet as a database and those power users who run MySQL/PostgreSQL.

Yes I do agree that OO serves most people's needs 90% of the time, but once in a while we tend to miss some of the features that MS Office has. In fact, where is that word count feature?

On the other hand, for organisations to even consider moving wholesale to OO, it must match what MS Office has to offer.

Novell's wholesale migration to OO doesn't count coz the have the Linux gurus around to customise the stuff and after all they have to eat what they hope to sell. How many organisations can say the same?